Supply chain and HGD shortages

Covid19 has been a blessing in disguise for this shambles of a government, it has covered up many of the Brexit problems, but there is still a lot to come, we ain't seen nothing yet as the song goes. I am practising my write and delete quite a lot now in readiness for my replies to those who still insist that they would vote for this disaster again, those people who told me that I had lost and needed to get over it, those people who told me I am unpatriotic, a traitor, suggested that if I liked the EU so much, I should 'move there' (?), that I need to temper my desires for foodstuffs to good old British food, who seem to think that by buying from their local farm shop and butcher that we will all have enough to eat, who tell stories of how their sainted Mothers fed a family of fourteen with a ham knuckle and a packet of dried peas and that 'we managed in the war, and we will manage again'. Next year will be very different for us all, but the difference is I didn't vote to make my life worse. You did.

And this is only the start apparently. All those Brexit voters salivating at the thought of wartime type shortages will be thrilled I’m sure…

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58462351

Actually, here’s a thought - perhaps those people could embrace the lack of choice and exist on wartime rations so leaving everything else for people who really didn’t want this and chose not to vote for it?

GillT57 and don’t forget those who, when I raised the potential food shortages that would inevitably result from Brexit some months ago, assured me that we would be able to grow our own food now and share it out as had happened from rosy cheeked farmers wives in the war. I’m looking forward to them knocking on my door with excess produce from their gardens and allotments! Any day now I’m sure….

Why has the HGV driver shortage taken 8 months to come to light. If it is all down to EU country workers withdrawing their labour surely they would have done so before January when all the new travel regulations came into being. Or,have companies stored all the food etc we have consumed in the past 8 months and now its run out. The panic will set in soon!

Medicine problems have already hit our family. I am was due for my six monthly Denosumab injection but first I need a blood test which was done but there was a delay in getting the denosumab and then a delay in getting an appointment. Then I was told I would need another blood test, more delay. Then could you believe it day before my appointment the surgery fridge went down and all the drugs in it were thrown out. So another prescription was issued but they don’t know when it will be in. Just going around in circles really. Rang over

More Brexit Whingers. Is there no end to those who are gifted with threesight, sadly because they do not have foresight.

Ciau

You tried that before. Its wasn't funny then, it isn't now.

Ciao. (or Miaow, if you like)

4allweknow

Why has the HGV driver shortage taken 8 months to come to light. If it is all down to EU country workers withdrawing their labour surely they would have done so before January when all the new travel regulations came into being. Or,have companies stored all the food etc we have consumed in the past 8 months and now its run out. The panic will set in soon!

Its a source of constant wonderment to me the way that some people think the world works.

I was on holiday in Scotland a week ago and there were definitely empty shelves in the supermarkets there. Some things were things we don't normally buy but needed as we were camping.

I won't be hoarding but will be keeping my storecupboard well stocked. A few of my regular purchases are missing from the shelves and I've had to buy alternatives.

The people I feel sorry for are those who live from week to week on low incomes who can't keep a store cupboard full of essentials. If the shops run out then they will go without! It is always the poor who suffer first! No doubt Boris will have no trouble getting delivery of his luxury goods via his rich friends!

With rising covid numbers I guess big Christmas celebrations may be cancelled again this year so we may have more to complain about than not being able to get Christmas goodies in the shops!

4allweknow part of the reason is that many companies built up stocks in the UK ahead of Brexit because they could see trouble ahead. Part is also shrinkage of the economy since the onset of COVID.

During the first couple of quarters of 2020, when COVID and the tightest lockdown was imposed, the economy shrank in size. The index for GDP that stood at 100 in the last quarter of 2019 fell to 78 in the second quarter of 2020. A drop of 22%. Despite the growth in online shopping on the whole consumer expenditure fell. Demand for goods fell and so did demand for lorry drivers..

The economy started growing in the second half of last year as COVID controls were eased and manufacturers and retailers started stocking up ahead of Brexit. However by the end of the year when Brexit happened demand was still lower than in 2019.

In the first quarter of 2021, with the second wave of COVID and further lockdowns the economy began to shrink again. With less goods being transported around, the demand for lorry drivers fell as well, so demand and supply were in balance

It wasn't until the second quarter of 2021 that the economy started growing again and the demand for lorry drivers to supply the goods that people wanted began to grow as well. towards 2019 figures - and this is when the shortage of lorry drivers became apparent. GDP still hasn't reached 2019 levels and the shortage of drivers becomes more acute daily.

So the reason the demand for lorry drivers has lagged behind the arrival of Brexit is because the economy shrank so drastically during COVID, plus manufacturers stock building ahead of Brexit meant that demand for drivers also decreased in the first half of 2020.

As GDP has yet to reach 2019 levels the situation can only get worse.

Source of my figures: www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/gdpfirstquarterlyestimateuk/apriltojune2021

Forget about Brexit...the HGV driver shortage is connected to other things, drivers retiring, drivers finding better paid work and EU drivers returning to their home countries because of Covid lockdowns.
5 million EU workers applied to stay here ( it was thought there were only about 3 million even here!) so HGV drivers did not decamp en masse because of Brexit.
Many countries across the EU are experiencing the same HGV driver shortage, Germany nearly as short of them as we are.
There is plenty of reading online from reliable sources on this subject, but certain avid Remainer posters prefer to say ‘It’s Brexit!’ At every opportunity.

"The industry-wide problem is thought to be caused by a shortage of lorry drivers due to Covid-19 restrictions and new EU immigration rules."
-------- Oh yes? Which covid restrictions might those be then? Because lorry drivers have been exempt from having to quarantine if 'pinged' since 24th July! (They were part of teh group including medical staff, police etc etc).
This is purely down to Brexit, with Eastern European lorry drivers having relocated back to their homelands as they felt unwelcomed here. Leaving haulage companies short staffed.
And as all the paperwork makes exporting anything from the UK a nightmare outgoing trade has slumped, meaning that any foreign lorry driver who brings a load to the UK will only earn on the outbound journey, as he is now very likely to be going back across the channel mostly empty. So most are choosing to only do runs within the EU now, where they can carry a payload outbound and return, as they used to do to the UK.

Some posters read like the child caught with their hand in the biscuit jar crying "It wasn't me." It was you and your denying the ghastly impact Brexit has had and will continue to have is either ignorance and lack of ability to reason intelligently, which is maybe forgivable in that it could be blamed partly on the lies told by the UK's right-wing media, or else simple blind-faced slavish adoration of the Con party, which is not (forgivable), in my book.

What nonsense Aneeba have you actually read up about the causes of HGV drivers including in EU countries? No, thought not, you are allowing your feelings about Brexit to colour your judgement, that and only reading social media instead of checking facts.

Olive53

"The industry-wide problem is thought to be caused by a shortage of lorry drivers due to Covid-19 restrictions and new EU immigration rules."
-------- Oh yes? Which covid restrictions might those be then? Because lorry drivers have been exempt from having to quarantine if 'pinged' since 24th July! (They were part of teh group including medical staff, police etc etc).
This is purely down to Brexit, with Eastern European lorry drivers having relocated back to their homelands as they felt unwelcomed here. Leaving haulage companies short staffed.
And as all the paperwork makes exporting anything from the UK a nightmare outgoing trade has slumped, meaning that any foreign lorry driver who brings a load to the UK will only earn on the outbound journey, as he is now very likely to be going back across the channel mostly empty. So most are choosing to only do runs within the EU now, where they can carry a payload outbound and return, as they used to do to the UK.

More nonsense.
If that were the case then Germany wouldn’t be so short of drivers for a start.

It’s a fallacy that Germany has the same driver shortage as the UK- the UK has approximately double the shortage of any other European county, and of course in pure number terms Germany has 15m more population than the UK, so it’s proportionately a much bigger issue here.

GrannySomerset

Tesco shop yesterday revealed quite a lot of gaps on the shelves so life could become more complicated. I forced myself not to buy extra of anything but I bet some people will revert to hoarding.

Yes, I've been in Tesco and found things missing, particularly meat.
I'm trying to buy the minimum but I don't want to run down my stocks too much.
I've not been able to get filtered skimmed milk for a while, very annoying as it keeps much better than ordinary milk.

Germany has a slightly less HGV driver problem, but not by much and certainly we are a lot less than double the amount.
Do not sweep the EU driver problem under the carpet because it’s convenient for your narrative concerning Brexit.
It’s a problem all over Europe, and will only be addressed by better pay and working conditions, and a lot of training www.bifa.org/news/articles/2018/dec/truck-driver-shortage-crisis-now-spreading-across-the-world

lemongrove I think Germany had the same foreign driver problem as we have. Their foreign drivers came from further East - Turkey, Ukraine, BeloRussia. British hauliers are saying an existing problem has been exacerbated by Brexit.www.trtworld.com/magazine/labour-shortage-deepens-in-germany-and-the-uk-49461

"Nonsense. nonsense, you're all making it up. Its all fine!!"

I'll try expressing this in really simple words, so that everybody can understand - even Brexiters.

There are HGV shortages in many parts of the world, for many, many reasons. But, we have our own, special, extra reason in Britain. We have Brexit. We are making it hard for people who are not British to work in the UK. We made them feel they weren't valued here. So when some of them went home, and discovered that they quite liked being in a country that valued them no matter which country they were born in, they decided not to come back.

So no, I don't think its purely down to Brexit. But anybody who says Brexit has nothing to do with it is just wrong. Either they are deluded, or they know its a problem and are trying to pretend everything's fine.

Lemon your article is from 2018 and the link doesn't work. Got anything more recent and relevant?

I'm puzzled by how regional these shortages are, my Ocado order was missing a lot of items and none of my frozen goods were delivered. I made up an order for my daughter in Eastbourne for the following day (she has a broken leg) and everything on her much larger order was successfully delivered.

Good try lemon, albeit a bit desperate. Still, you have already assured your readers that you would vote again for Brexit, despite the slowly unfolding but predicted disaster, so you obviously know more than the CEOs of most major supermarkets, and the RHA. What a gift.

cc

I'm puzzled by how regional these shortages are, my Ocado order was missing a lot of items and none of my frozen goods were delivered. I made up an order for my daughter in Eastbourne for the following day (she has a broken leg) and everything on her much larger order was successfully delivered.

Definitely regional, I went to Waitrose on Thursday with DD the only shelf that was empty was one for tissues, which had 20% off.

Aldi on Friday, all shelves full.

That’s odd, I was just reading from the Bifa site.Ah well, look it up, there is plenty out there.
Eastern Europeans didn’t leave because they didn’t feel valued
( that’s hilarious!) they either left because of Covid and needed to be at home, or the frequent lockdowns made things hard for them to work at all.
Other EU countries are having the same problems, we are only shorter of drivers than them because we won’t recruit more ( new)Eastern Europeans who aren’t already resident in the UK..... we could do, if they were considered by the ‘points’ basis, that’s a government decision. ALL countries will have to invest in massive driver training for the future.

cc

I'm puzzled by how regional these shortages are, my Ocado order was missing a lot of items and none of my frozen goods were delivered. I made up an order for my daughter in Eastbourne for the following day (she has a broken leg) and everything on her much larger order was successfully delivered.

Yes, definitely regional, my Ocado orders have all been fulfilled apart from an odd item here and there ( but that’s always been the case.)